Lord Coe, chairman of the London Olympics organising body, said sport had a massive opportunity to fill the gap left by the "massive collapse" in young people's trust in institutions, politics and the media.

Coe said 18- to 25-year-olds had lost confidence in people and institutions which 20 years ago had their authority unchallenged.

He said sports organisers and companies sponsoring such activity could reach out to these young people and fill the confidence gap.

"Church, politicians, the legal profession, the media, police … Have all been in the spotlight and it's been a pretty torrid landscape for these institutions," he told the Advertising Week Europe conference in central London on Monday.

"There has been a massive, massive collapse in the confidence of young people. We have always assumed the trust in our institutions. Sport is in a really interesting space now. There is a massive opportunity."

He said you would not have been believed had you predicted 20 years ago that in 2013 the monarchy would be the UK's most trusted institution.

Coe, now the executive chairman of the sports marketing arm of Chime Communications, described sport as "the most potent social worker in the community" and said businesses could help young people gain access and as a result improve their own image.

He said 40% of the members of the Haringey club where he trained as a runner were from the Broadwater Farm estate in north London.

"Sport has a massive opportunity to fill that gap in trust," he added. "Companies that operate around that space can grab what I call some of that trust landscape."

Coe said: "If you look at what happened in 2007, 2008 [during the financial crash] whatever happened in that year and a half – and plenty of people far smarter than me will already have given their view – it is unmistakeable to me that part of the pathology was these rather narrow, aggressive sets of behaviour.

"The other thing that went along with that was a massive, massive collapse in the confidence of young people.

"We have always rather assumed the best of our institutions. The one thing I have noticed in the last few years is that, for young people, aged 18 to 25, there was a cataclysmic collapse of confidence in those institutions."

He added: "Sport has got a massive opportunity to fill that gap in trust.

"At its best sport is the antithesis of a lot of that – it's about free, fair and open competition.

"Companies that really want to look at sport and be values driven and be involved in some of the things that sport can access ... it can access things in a way that no other organisation or activity can.

"Getting sport properly into that space I think provides a massive, massive opportunity ... That for me is where the focus of the next few years will be."

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